Cold Wars
1972 and 2020
In 1972, Russia and America were fighting two bloodless but mentally grueling wars with each other: One on a chessboard — between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky:
And the other on a global board — between Brezhnev and Nixon:
As the only two superpowers on Earth, both wars were “cold” and fought primarily in the mind — even as missiles and chess pieces kept shifting and bristling with evil intent.
But on May 26th, 1972, Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon finally sat down in Moscow and signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) — the first thaw in a long and deadly Cold War.
And a few months later, on July 11th, World Chess Champion Boris Spassky sat down with Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland, and became the first American in one hundred years to dismantle a Russian chess champion.
Whereas the Cold War would continue to rage for another 18 years, the Chess War was convincingly won by Bobby Fischer after 6 weeks and 21 exhausting games. He was the first American to hold the title of World Champion since William Steinitz in 1888 and broke the Soviet domination of the game over the previous 24 years. And like the Cold War, it was a universal game, and the whole world was watching:
During and immediately after Fischer’s victory, Chess clubs were springing up in towns, villages, and schools all around the world — even on the tip of Africa where I grew up. Chess, some would say, was returning to the continent of its birth:
I was 11 and I was hooked. My friends and I carried around little magnetic chess sets in our blazer pockets and pulled them out on the edges of rugby fields, on wooden benches with our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and in boring classes.
And then, for one glorious week in 1972, I became chess champion of Boston Primary School in Cape Town, clinging tenaciously to the top of the chess ladder before Henry Van Noort, the Dutch marauder, came storming back to regain his revered title.
We were hardcore players, yet knew little of good chess strategies such as pawn development, classic openings, or controlling the center of the board. We tried to follow the Fischer-Spassky matches printed each morning in The Cape Times and were mesmerized by the intricacies of the game — and some of Fischer’s brilliant sacrifices.
But having no instruction or coaches, we usually came roaring out with our queens and bishops, trying for the quickest Tyson-style knockout upon each other. But what fascinated us about chess was how quickly every game pushed us into new territory where we found ourselves in dangerous battles we had never experienced before: military stand-offs so tense the slightest miscalculation could trigger a painful death by strangulation; races across deserts on bishops and knights; sieges in castles against hordes of suicidal pawns; hazardous passages through enemy territories; and blood-letting for minute territorial advantages.
It was a game perfectly suited to the Cold War of the ’70s: the kings of Russia and America ensconced in their distant palaces while their pawns waged war in jungles of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Angola. ’72 was a glorious year in chess — all around the world. But far more importantly, it was also the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
Someone once said of chess that “whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated, a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing.” With their mastery of chess, perhaps the Russians began to realize the futility of the Arms Race too. And in 1989 they gracefully resigned. And our war against the Coronavirus may require of us the same ability to think 20 moves ahead, make strategic sacrifices, and follow the science of self-defense.
Chess is uniquely adapted for the world in which we now find ourselves: played on 64 squares, with no risk of infection, no chance of cheating, and no language barriers. There are an estimated 600 000 000 Chess players in the world today (Fide 2012), and Chess.com currently hosts over 23 million of them; a number which is sure to increase as we all yearn to re-connect in some way during this historic quarantine.
I recently played my first North Korean in a speed-chess challenge which I lost. We couldn’t speak to each other, but for 15 minutes we waged war in a universal language. And it felt good.
